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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25011175">Eternally</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard'>TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Blood and Injury, Fantasy, Gen, Light Angst, Magic, Mentions of Death, Mild Language, Multiple Realities, Multiple Selves, Multiple Universes Colliding, OT5, Psychological Horror, Surreal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:41:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25011175</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The circle revolves endlessly.</p><p>They want to see the end.</p><p>They have to keep trying until they do.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eternally</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my own interpretation of the MV.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There was something about the way tonight </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It felt like an ending. A requiem. It felt like a chapter closing. Tonight felt like their story couldn’t possibly continue past this one moment because the pages of the book that followed had been ripped out. All that was in front of them was the blackness of storm clouds. All that lay before them was a void split in half by lightning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was nothing else.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were the only ones left.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The five of them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If it weren’t for them, there would be… nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Horned One clenched his fist tight as he squeezed his eyes shut against the frigid wind.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Towering One did not understand. He had tried all things yet still found himself here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Winged One looked frightened, terrified by what he’d witnessed. What he’d participated in.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Spined One couldn’t stop his growing grin. He had caused all this. He’d been the spark.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The One-Eyed One could not stop his tears. He had seen this pain once before. Felt it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something about a night like tonight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about the five of them being here together. It felt impossible.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes. That’s what it was. Something about tonight felt impossible.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about the smell in the air. The choking stench of rot. Everything covered in ash. The electrical charge that buzzed beneath their skin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was just… </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> about tonight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had challenged fate. They had fought destiny. They had broken the cycle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yet there was no triumph here. No celebration. No real joy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The five of them stood at the edge of the world. Not side by side - not quite - but together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>None of them knew the true depths of the emotions they felt. None of them knew how to name this storm. None of them could describe what they’d seen or what they’d done or how they’d done it. None of them had the words for it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>However, one of them came close. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The One-Eyed One said, “We weren’t supposed to make it here.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yet they had. The five of them. Against all odds.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it may not have been a good thing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 1: The Last Night</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was like waking up from a dream.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin blinked open his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. He nearly choked. His lungs burned like he’d been drowning. His heart pounded in his chest like he’d been running. His muscles ached like he’d been fighting.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was immediately on edge. But something told him that the danger had passed. Whatever the peril, it had come and gone and he’d come out on the other side of it alive. Safe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin relaxed. He couldn’t even remember what had just happened. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing just moments before. He blinked again. The static in his head dissolved. The fog that hung over his thoughts cleared. Slowly, color came through the white noise.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There had been a confrontation. And he’d won.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was all he knew.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where was he?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked around. What was this place? He didn’t recognize it. How on earth did he get here?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was scorched rubble all around him. Some kind of city. Or at least that’s what it used to be before something burned it to the ground. Nothing but the memories remained. Blackened skeletons of towering buildings. The long, crooked spine of an iron bridge. Crumbling foundations. Flattened stairways. Charred tree trunks, devoid of life. Everything was covered in soot.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin did not want to know what happened here. He didn’t want to know why such a beautiful place now looked like this. Perhaps he wanted to turn his eyes from this because the hardened knot of guilt in his chest quietly told him that he had something to do with this destruction.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Above him, the sky was red with what might have been dawn.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A new day stepping forward to take the place of a long, long night. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The wind whipped around him and brought the noise of thunder to his ears. Lightning flashed overhead but it seemed as if the terrible storm was passing. Leaving him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Leaving… </span>
  <em>
    <span>them?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked to his right. There were others with him. Four boys his age. Four boys he was sure had survived this with him. Whatever </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> was. Whatever madness they’d just come out of by the skin of their teeth. These four boys. He couldn’t see their faces. Not exactly. He was unable to get a good look because he stood just a tad behind them, their backs to him, their faces to the blood red sky. He knew these boys and trusted them. Soobin knew these four boys would be with him when they took the next step forward. If there even was a step to take after all of this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But that didn’t explain the emptiness he felt. There should be happiness in a moment like this. They had just done something amazing. The details evaded him, scurrying into the depths of his mind whenever he nearly remembered something, but the emotion remained. The five of them had finished some great challenge but they stood here like this, quiet and still, watching the storm dissipate.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Watching it all… end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something in his hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked down at it. A... book? Leather-bound. Gilded in gold. Locked up tight by some clockwork mechanism that Soobin had never seen before. No. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> seen this before but he wasn’t entirely sure where. He could almost recall it. He could almost say exactly what this book meant to him - to them - but he lost the thought about as quickly as it came to him. He ran his thumb across the cover. The texture felt like flesh. The book was extremely heavy to be so small. It gave off faint warmth like it was alive. It gently pulsed in his hand like it was some small creature trying to catch its breath.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This book was important. It was the </span>
  <em>
    <span>key</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Soobin did not know how he knew that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wait.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had to tell Yeonjun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Frantic, Soobin rushed forward. He stepped over the rubble and gravel and piles of ash. He put one foot up on the stairs and then the other. There was something in this book. Something special. The pages held knowledge that the five of them needed and he had just figured out how to open it! After all this time, after all of this searching, he knew how to operate the strange mechanism that kept it shut. The solution was so simple. How had none of them thought of it?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun,” Soobin called out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The stairs felt brittle beneath his shoes, like the stone was moments away from falling apart, fragmenting into smoke and ash.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin stopped short, breathing hard. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The blonde-haired boy at the top of the stairs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Horned One.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was this boy’s name. The Horned One. Soobin knew that. Somehow. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he also knew, right at that moment, that something was very wrong. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They weren’t supposed to be here. The five of them shouldn’t be standing beneath this red sky with its black clouds and white lightning. They weren’t supposed to be alive.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We weren’t supposed to make it here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Someone had just said that. Moments ago. He’d heard them!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They weren’t supposed to make it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With far more doubt in his voice, Soobin croaked out, “Yeonjun?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because that was The Horned One’s name.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun turned around to look at him. Slowly slowly slowly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he wasn’t the Yeonjun that Soobin knew. He wasn’t the Yeonjun that should be here. None of them should </span>
  <em>
    <span>be here</span>
  </em>
  <span> but this Yeonjun shouldn’t… be here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This Yeonjun was… different. Changed. Marked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And covered in his own blood, his face a painting of cuts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lightning flickered. The brightness of it revealed the cinder-bright ferocity in Yeonjun’s eyes, the wicked glow of barely satiated hunger. The sharpened points of his teeth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. No. Soobin had it all wrong. From the start.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun was supposed to be here. It was Soobin who shouldn’t be here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the one who was in the wrong place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin took a frightened step back. Too quickly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His shoes had no grip on the soot-covered stairs. He slipped. Put his foot down on a stair farther away than he first thought. Thrown off his balance, he tumbled backwards.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He fell and fell and fell and-- </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin jolted awake. His eyes snapped open.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Another dream crumbled away in shimmering, ephemeral pieces.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He blinked and sucked in a breath. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything felt right. This was the right place to be, he thought. In these bones. In this skin. With this blood in his veins. Yes. He was in the right place. This was where he ought to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked around. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No red sky. No black clouds. No white lightning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No ruined city. No ash in the air.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just the four walls of the group’s practice studio, the windows foggy with condensation, the air damp with humidity and sweat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was sitting on the floor, propped up against the mirrors. Not exactly the most comfortable place for a nap, based on the stiffness in his limbs. He pulled his hand away from his face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was Beomgyu, a short distance away. Crouching down in front of him. Beomgyu always had his cell phone out. He was always taking pictures. Always recording things. He didn’t want a single memory to go to waste, he said. Even the bad ones. Even the dull ones. He wanted to record them all. Keep them safe. So that he could play them all back and not forget a single thing. And right now that phone was pointed at Soobin’s face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Caught you snoozing,” Beomgyu giggled, his smile bright.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t the worst thing Beomgyu could have recorded him doing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin turned his head. There. Over on the bench by the door. It was Taehyun. Headphones on. Phone in his hand. He was always listening to music. Always discovering new sounds, new artists. Deep-diving into different genres. Trying out songs like he was trying on shoes. Taehyun must have sensed Soobin’s gaze on him because he turned to face him with this look on his face. It was always impossible to read Taehyun’s expressions even on a good day. No one knew what he was thinking and Soobin faced that exact dilemma now. Was Taehyun… annoyed? Frustrated? Happy? Sad? Completely indifferent? Before Soobin could figure it out, Taehyun hurriedly looked away from him, his gaze returning to his phone screen, his face even more unreadable than before.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On the other side of the practice studio were Yeonjun and Kai. As far as Soobin remembered, Yeonjun had been trying to coach Kai through an intricate bit of choreography but Kai couldn’t seem to get the footwork right. Always slipping or tripping. It was why the five of them were still here so late. Apparently, Kai was no better at the dance moves now than he’d been before Soobin’s nap. Even as Soobin sat there, he watched Kai dance his way right out of his left shoe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop, stop,” Yeonjun instructed. He paused the music.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” Kai squeaked out. He ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair and dipped his head in apology.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin never understood why Kai didn’t wear his shoes properly. Not just at practice but anywhere. Everywhere. Kai always shoved his feet into his Converses so that his heels crushed the backs of them. Maybe when they were out somewhere, it could be fine. Uncomfortable but fine. But trying to dance in shoes like that couldn’t have been much better than attempting to sprint with untied shoelaces. Why did Kai do that when it would have been so much easier to dance if he just pulled the shoes on completely?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Again,” Yeonjun said with far more patience than their choreographer would have had. “From the top.” He pressed play on the song again, starting it from the section Kai needed help with.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Kai wheezed. He was clearly exhausted, having been at this half the evening, but Yeonjun probably wouldn’t even pretend to call it a night until Kai had this dance down. They were running out of days to work with. Every hour counted. Kai shoved his foot back into his Converse, smashing the back flat with his heel again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“5, 6, 7, 8…” Yeonjun counted him off when the part in the song came up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai began the routine again. Stiff. Jerky. A half-beat behind on every move. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d never get the steps right if he didn’t pick his feet up off the floor.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In fact, he danced right out of his left shoe again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a little shocking that Yeonjun hadn’t forced Kai to wear his shoes correctly already. They’d be done for the night. No, they’d be back at the dorm asleep in bed by now if Yeonjun had spoken up. But based on the serious look on his face, the slight furrow of his eyebrows, the way he called out each of Kai’s errors, Yeonjun was holding out on purpose. He was going to make Kai do it again and again until Kai wrapped his head around his own mistake and corrected it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even if it took them until dawn.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin,” Beomgyu chirped.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin snapped out of his thoughts and turned back around to find Beomgyu’s phone held up close to his face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His surprised expression must have been the footage Beomgyu needed. The younger boy stood up and wandered away, aiming his phone at Kai’s dancing struggles, purposefully shouting “5, 6, 7, 8” off-beat to throw Kai’s dance steps even farther out of tempo.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gosh. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was so tired. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wiped the grit of sleep from his eyes and fought back a yawn. He must not have napped for very long. No. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. He’d had a bad dream. That’s why he didn’t feel rested. The nightmare still clung to his bones and made him feel heavy. Like he wasn’t quite awake yet. Like he was going to blink open his eyes and realize he’d been in his dorm bed asleep this whole time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something was wrong here. Something was off about this place. This room. It made Soobin sit up straight and look around but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Had the managers come in and moved things around for some reason? Not by a lot, Soobin would have noticed that. But maybe the bench was in a slightly different place like someone had bumped against it and slid it out of place. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or… something! It was going to annoy him until he figured it out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The puzzle pieces were all there but he was missing crucial shapes. Something </span>
  <em>
    <span>subtle</span>
  </em>
  <span> was off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Man. How badly had that dream spooked him? Now he was sitting here thinking the room was slightly too small or something. Or perhaps slightly too large.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t even recall what the dream had been about in the first place. Not really. Not entirely. But it had been a frightening dream. He did know that. Images of fire flickered through his mind. And there had been a raging thunderstorm. Something massive and terrible uncoiled itself in the sky and attempted to swallow everything but they had stopped it somehow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked down at his hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was supposed to be something important there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was supposed to be holding on to it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He instinctively looked up at the whisper of his name. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was it Beomgyu calling him again? No. Beomgyu was off in the corner, still messing with Kai as he danced. Disrupting things to the point where Yeonjun was trying to shoo him away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Someone had just called Soobin’s name. He was sure of it. He’d heard it clearly. Even over the blaring music Kai was currently dancing to. Soobin had heard his name. It was why he had looked up! The voice had come from his right. From… over by the windows?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But there was no one standing there. No one he could see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Were they outside? A manager or something trying to get his attention without coming inside the building?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin stood up slowly, still feeling stiff from his nap. His joints popped in protest as he moved.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had no one else heard it?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun probably couldn’t hear anything with his headphones on. Kai was starting his dance routine from the top yet again. Beomgyu wasn’t even looking his way, so caught up with trying to film. Yeonjun was too busy telling Kai to stop fussing with his jacket to play a prank.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin swallowed down a mouthful of nervous spit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Step by step he crossed the practice studio until he stood in front of the row of windows. It was early spring and he could feel the chilly, brisk night air cut into the sticky heat of the room and ghost across his skin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin leaned forward, slowly, until he could get a good look out of the slightly-open window.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No one was outside, he realized. No one </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> be outside this window because the room was five floors off the ground. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were only the twinkling city lights of downtown beyond the foggy glass and, even at this hour, there was plenty of noisy traffic down below. Cars honking. Trucks rumbling. An ambulance siren somewhere far, far off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was hearing things. He was just tired. That was all. Any excuse was a good excuse.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He put a hand on the glass and slid the window shut.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.” More urgent this time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At the sound of his name, he turned all the way around. It was unmistakable. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew</span>
  </em>
  <span> someone had called him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin didn’t even look at his friends. His eyes went straight to the open door on the opposite end of the studio. He was positive that someone out in the hallway had just called his name.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But why?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well… They </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> here pretty late. It could be one of the higher-ups coming in to tell them to wrap it up for the night. Or a janitor asking them to clear out so that they can mop the sweat off the floors. Or that could have been Soobin’s own selfish desire to cut the night short, get to his bed and sleep.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He crossed the room one step at a time, running through the explanations in his head. ‘We’ll keep it down.’ ‘We know it’s late. We were just on our way out.’ ‘We lost track of time. Sorry.’ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wait…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had the hallway beyond the door always been so dark? He stepped closer. If someone was standing on the other side of the door, he couldn’t see them through the glass. He couldn’t see them through the space between the door and the jamb. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gripped the handle and pulled, yanking the door open.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no one standing on the other side.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no one standing in the dark hallway at all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Strange.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fluorescent glow from the practice room didn’t illuminate much but the studio lights still brightened the hallway enough for him to see all the way down to the elevator doors at the far end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything was quiet. And dark. And still.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now he was positive. This hallway usually wasn’t so dark. Even when all of the other rooms and studios on this floor were empty, the hallways had never been so heavily blanketed in shadow. Had a bulb blown out? Had </span>
  <em>
    <span>all</span>
  </em>
  <span> of them blown out? No. That was silly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What was sillier was that Soobin kept hearing his name be called. It sounded like the voice of a woman. High and soft and flute-like. Familiar like he knew exactly who it belonged to. Familiar like he could put a name to it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. He was just tired and confusing things he’d dreamed with the things he’d seen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin stepped back into the studio. He started to turn around. “Hey, you guys, did you hear--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The elevator bell dinged.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin whirled back around to stare down the hall. His heart picked up speed in his chest, hammering away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He opened his mouth to speak.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before he could get a word out, the elevator doors slid open. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Revealing an empty cab. Spilling sterile white light out into the hall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elevators didn’t just </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> that, did they? The machines only opened their doors if someone pressed the call button. Right?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hesitantly, he took a step out into the dark hallway. For a very brief moment, he thought he caught a whiff of something burning. That heavy scent of ozone in the atmosphere right before a storm. “Hello,” he called out, immediately hating the way his voice echoed and echoed. Like he was inside a cave. “Hell--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There it was. Very faint. So quiet that he almost couldn’t hear it over the music tumbling out into the hall from behind him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The voice came through in crackling radio static. Buzzing. Distant.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Remember my name.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he had heard no one’s name except his own.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took another step forward and then another. Farther out into the hall. “Hello,” he called again, louder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But there was no response.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Perhaps it was due to the practice studio being so humid and hot but it was dreadfully chilly in the hall. Enough to make goosebumps crawl up his arms. Enough to make the hair at the back of his neck stand on end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The elevator doors slid closed. Slowly, slowly, slowly. The other end of the hall became swamped in darkness again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something wrong here. Soobin hadn’t been sure before but now he was positive.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ever since he woke up, something had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even as he stood there in the hall, he felt like he hadn’t entirely woken up yet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Click.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The light at the end of the hall blinked on. The warm, orange light cast away all of the shadows, reached into every corner.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no one in the hall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Soobin shivered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no one in the hall but he was certain that he was not </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the hall. Not anymore.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something there. He couldn’t see it but he could feel it, sense it, and imagine its wicked, towering shape.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Cool air billowed across his skin like something very close to him had moved.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hello.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The word was on the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth to say it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, in succession, the other lights in the hall clicked on. Quickly, quickly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Click. Click. Click.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something was coming right for him. Right for this door!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin jumped back. He slammed the door shut with all of his might. The noise echoed around the room like a thunderclap, startling the others.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had acted fast but he was positive he hadn’t been fast enough. Whatever it was, he’d felt it move past him. Through him. The chills had gone up his spine to the base of his neck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t been fast enough!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whatever had gotten off the elevator, he had foolishly allowed it into the practice studio. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was in here. With them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At least that voice was one he knew. Beomgyu.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing,” the boy asked. “Why are you--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Every light in the room started flickering. Off and on, off and on, rapidly. Pain jolted through his head. Soobin couldn’t keep his eyes open. The flashing lights were too much for him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Guys?” Yeonjun shouted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> to shout. There was some kind of alarm going off. Loud and shrill and grating.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin thought it was the ringing of his own ears. He thought all of this was in his own head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He slapped his hands over his ears but he could still hear the terrifyingly loud alarm. Even with his eyes shut, he could still see the rapid flickering of the lights on the other side of his eyelids, everything exploding red.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What had he done? What had he done wrong?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ever the opportunist, Beomgyu held up his phone and hit record to capture the strangeness. “Holy shit,” he excitedly squealed. It surely wasn’t the time to be making videos but that didn’t seem to bug him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’s going on,” Soobin heard Kai scream from the other side of the room. “What’s happening? Is it a fire?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But that didn’t seem quite right.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a fire. No. There had </span>
  <em>
    <span>been</span>
  </em>
  <span> a fire. But it wasn’t here in this building, Soobin knew. It was someplace else. Here, yet not here. The fire had been where that storm was. Where that red sky was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fire had been over there where the five of them were.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where The Horned One stood with The Towering One and The Spined One and The Winged One and The One-Eyed One.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had done something </span>
  <em>
    <span>over there</span>
  </em>
  <span> that had changed something </span>
  <em>
    <span>over here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The floor was shaking. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The windows rattled in the walls. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The lights hanging from the ceiling swayed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun screamed, “Is it an earthquake?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do we need to run,” Kai yelled. “Do we need to find cover?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Beomgyu, stop recording and call for help,” snapped Taehyun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That wouldn’t change anything. Running. Crying. None of it would help. Soobin knew that whatever this was, it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t an earthquake or a storm or a fire. No. Something about the world itself was splintering.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because they weren’t supposed to be here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Such a quiet, thin, delicate voice and yet Soobin still managed to hear it over all the chaos.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That voice was coming from out in the hall. There was no mistake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin sprang into action. He rushed forward towards the door and peered through the glass into the orange-lit hall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What he saw was impossible. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The hallway beyond the door stretched and stretched. Colors smeared. Shapes blurred. Even as he stood there and watched, the hellish, orange hallway increased in length.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could barely see the elevator doors now. Every time he blinked, they were farther away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Like the doors were being pulled away from him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Like the exit was being </span>
  <em>
    <span>taken</span>
  </em>
  <span> from him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin threw open the practice studio door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were </span>
  <em>
    <span>inside</span>
  </em>
  <span> yet there was a howling wind barreling through the infinite hallway. Soobin squinted his eyes against the gale. It stirred up his hair. His clothes. It whipped at his face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They couldn’t stay in this room. The elevator was the only safe place. He did not know how he knew that. He didn’t know who had told him that. All Soobin was sure of was that the elevator was the only place that would not fall apart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin reached out a hand towards the open door and watched as his hand </span>
  <em>
    <span>dissolved</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>See?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This world was already starting to crumble.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wait,” Yeonjun screamed at his back. “We have to stick together!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Soobin was already leaping.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 2: The Song Of The Star</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The wind howled in his ears.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Colors and lights stretched and skewed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His senses were overloaded trying to process all of the information. All of the sensation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin felt numb.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> he?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A dream within a dream? The dark depths of some nightmare?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He now knew why the hall had felt strange. Why the room had felt slightly, subtly off. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t actually been in the world he knew. He had been in some twisted place that was trying very hard to be the world he knew.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It sounded like Yeonjun’s voice. Right behind him. He turned around. Soobin had only taken but two or three steps away from the practice studio door but it was nowhere to be seen. Or, rather, now that it no longer needed to be a door, it had stopped being a door and was simply a long stripe of blue color beneath his feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin exhaled.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was so terribly quiet here, even though he could still feel the wind gusting past him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Green. Red. Blue. Yellow. White.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All around him, colors pulsed. Throbbed. Writhed like living, breathing things. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were so close he could almost touch them. They were so solid it was like they were leading him somewhere.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin turned back around. The elevator doors continued to slide away from him, the light from between them getting dimmer and dimmer with distance. He’d never be able to reach them at this point. He thought… He thought he knew where he was going. He thought he knew what he was doing. Now he wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to leave everyone else behind.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin stepped forward. He could hear his shoes. Hear his own breaths. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For a place so full of movement, for a place so loud with sound, why was it so achingly quiet?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a silence that hurt to listen to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin took another step forward. The elevator doors were right in front of him, he thought. A piercing, stable blue light at the center of this maelstrom, yet… Even that light was beginning to stretch and twist and fall apart. An unstable kaleidoscope of fractured patterns.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything was falling apart. Even here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had been too late. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t made his decision fast enough. He hadn’t acted with enough conviction.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He should have rushed forward so he could go to one place or stood still so he could stay in the other place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now he was in neither place. Not here. Not there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But… still somewhere.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Somewhere </span>
  <em>
    <span>else.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A brand new place that was solidifying around him. Taking shape. Growing and building.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Between one blink and the next, one step and the next, more and more of this new place came into focus.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He saw lights. Smelled sweet, frying food. Heard sounds.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fireworks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Laughter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Music.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were people here!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were… </span>
  <em>
    <span>people</span>
  </em>
  <span> here?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t see their faces. They walked right next to him yet they seemed so far away, blurred into streaks of light and shadow, celebrating something. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One more step. One more blink.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The world solidified beneath him. He saw trees. He saw a night sky full of bright white stars. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was all so beautiful.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was this real? Was he dreaming?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Could he stay here?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That wouldn’t be so bad.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Plink.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A tinny, bell-like sound grabbed hold of his attention. He looked down at the grass beneath his shoes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He almost didn’t see it: a twenty-sided dice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It must have come from--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Huh?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin blinked. Had the dice given off a gold, shimmery spark of light?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything was so strange here. It was easier to believe than to doubt.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was about to question things further when the dice glowed gold again. Brighter. Right before his eyes. The sparkling gold light reached across the grass in a brilliant, circular, geometric pattern. Gold was all around him. All beneath him. It was there and gone faster than he could really see it. The color burned away like it was on fire. Gold sizzling into the night sky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was that magic? If he knew what he was looking at, that was something extremely high-level and complicated. Skilled hands had made such a circle. But had a spell just been broken? Or had it just been cast?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It startled Soobin how little he was shocked by this. How little he was surprised by the magic right beneath his feet. It was almost like he knew what this all was. Something he had been told before. Something he’d done before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A memory he could just barely recall. A dream.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t the first place he’d been to. Or the second or the third or the fifth. He’d lived through something like this already. Being in a place like this. In a world like this. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With the five of them. It was always with the five of them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Briefly, Soobin remembered a forest. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Briefly, Soobin remembered a fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There always seemed to be a fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And a storm. There always seemed to be a storm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin knelt down to pick up the dice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The edges were smooth. Well-worn. The surface was cool to the touch. Almost cold. The dice was light between his fingers, a simple white in color, and he could tell just by this mild skin contact that a catalyst as small as this object shouldn’t have been able to hold a spell so strong in a place as </span>
  <em>
    <span>in between</span>
  </em>
  <span> as this. Whoever had done it was very strong. Very talented.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He did not know how he knew that or why it made so much sense to him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a shimmer out of the corner of his eye. Gold.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a child running towards him. But unlike all of the other people here, Soobin could clearly see the child’s face. Those big brown eyes. That giddy little smile. The child carried an ice cream cone and ran on wobbly legs through the grass.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin shouldn’t know that face yet it was familiar to him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why was everything so familiar to him? Here. There. No matter the place, he always knew it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How many times had he dreamt this?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something special here. He was supposed to be doing something special. He knew it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was supposed to be something in his hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He needed to be holding a book.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin had zoned out a moment too long. He blinked and realized, a bit too late, that the child was running right towards him. No. The child was already running into him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A mild impact but it jostled them both. Knocked Soobin off his balance. Knocked the ice cream cone from the child’s hand. It fell into the grass. Ruined. Wasted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin turned to look at the child. “Hey, are you okay?” He stood up, already anticipating the child’s tears and saddened wails.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The child turned to look up at him. No tears. Not even a hint of remorse for the fallen ice cream cone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You should be more careful,” Soobin stated. “You could hurt--” The sentence stopped in his throat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The child was dressed normally for the weather. Sweater. Pants. That wasn’t unusual. What was strange was how the child wore his shoes. Improperly. Feet crammed in. Heels crushing the back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin only knew one person who chose to wear their shoes like that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hueningkai!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It hadn’t been Soobin who had called the name, although he’d desperately wanted to. The voice belonged to someone else. Someone he couldn’t see. Someone just beyond the edge of what he could perceive.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kai, where are you?” A mother’s voice. Full of worry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The little child turned in the direction of the sound and took off running, leaving Soobin alone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Alone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Alone in a place like this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because he was alone here, he realized.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This festival - this celebration - was empty. There were no fireworks. No music. No frying food.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No trees. No laughter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No people.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had there ever been? Truly?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin thought about the twenty-sided dice in his hand. He questioned its use. He wondered who would build a spell so beautiful and intricate in such a far away, hidden place. And why couldn’t he shake the suspicion that he had left it here for himself?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A circle. Neverending.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A recurring nightmare.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked around. He couldn’t see very far. Not that he was blinded but because there wasn’t much to see. Even this tiny little world was ending.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything that had ever been here was just a fragment of a dream. A splinter of a wish. A shadow of a promise. He was neither here nor there. This place was in between and he was about to slip through the cracks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before he even realized it, a tear spilled out of his eye and slid down his cheek.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin dropped to his knees in the grass, overcome with despair.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had tried. He had tried everything!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But the magic was gone. He would not be able to make it out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Another tear slipped from his eyes. And then another. He couldn’t stop them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The world was dissolving away. The lights were fading like dying stars. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t have been here. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t have made it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now… Now there was nothing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The voice was so gentle yet the syllables of his name were so strong.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Remember my name.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Right. There was power in a name.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But whose name was he supposed to remember if not his own?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whose voice was this? And why were they always guiding him?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He felt a comforting presence in front of him. Warm. Strong. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His tears did not stop but they slowed. His sadness did not cease but it ebbed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And now Soobin remembered. Right here at the end of all things, teetering on the edge of the abyss. Now he knew. Now it made a bit more sense.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He asked, “Why did you break the promise?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 3: Promise</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Reality splintered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dimensions shattered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a ripple effect. Something terrible and tragic had happened elsewhere so now the tidal wave of destruction was flowing outwards, ripping apart everything.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a fire. There was always a fire. And a storm. There was always a storm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lifetimes converged like the threads of fate themselves were tangled in incomprehensible knots.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun didn’t know what was going on.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He only knew fright. He only knew the rapid pace of his hammering heart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where were the others? He had to look after the others.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He counted them off. Taehyun, Kai, Beomgyu.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The alarm blared. A siren rang. The whole room trembled as the world threatened to come undone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Noise pounded at his ears and vibrated his skin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They weren’t supposed to make it here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where was Soobin?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soobin,” Yeonjun shouted across the room, over the noise. Over the chaos. There he was by the door. Trying to leave. Trying to leave without them. Yeonjun screamed, “Wait. We have to stick together!” Because they could only keep going if they were five. “Soobin!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun took a step forward, trying to chase Soobin down, trying to keep them from being separated. Soobin was so far away even though he was standing</span>
  <em>
    <span> right there</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The five of them all needed to be here or they wouldn’t make it--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hello?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>--anywhere.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun was no longer in the practice studio. Hell, he didn’t know where he was at all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Darkness surrounded him. Stillness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where were the others? Where were Taehyun and Kai and Beomgyu and Soobin? Where was the practice room and the lights and mirrors? What happened to all of that noise?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was so dark that he couldn’t see. It was so cold that he nearly shivered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t where he was supposed to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Light.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bright and piercing. Shining directly at him. A star in the center of the night sky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was trying to guide him somewhere. Like most stars do. It was attempting to take him somewhere. And he would snatch up any chance to remove himself from this darkness and get out of this in between place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun stepped forward. Slowly at first but then with more confident steps.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If he could just find the others… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was it his imagination or had this black, undefinable world become just a tad more… real?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could hear his footsteps now. Hear his panting breath. He could feel the way the air brushed over his hands and stirred his hair. Yeonjun could sense that he was no longer in some wide, boundless void. He was now in a narrow hallway. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was… concrete.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Not just </span>
  <em>
    <span>solid</span>
  </em>
  <span> but made of concrete. This pathway. This tunnel with a light at the end of it. This was a real place now. A dream made real.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was no longer inside. He was outside.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was like waking up from a dream. Snapping into consciousness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>...and soaking in the sight of a nightmare.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What the hell?” The curse slipped from his mouth before he could stop it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t any place he knew. No. Even if it was a place he knew, there was no way he could recognize it now. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was all destroyed. Ruined. Torched.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All that lay around him was rubble. The aftermath of some catastrophic event.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A fire had taken place here. Because there was always a fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As Yeonjun continued to step forward, he saw cinders float through the air. He saw specks of ash. Clouds of soot. Everywhere he turned, the fire had charred everything black. Towers of stone stood, scorched. Skeletons of iron were half-melted, twisted into freakish shapes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>These were once buildings, he realized. An entire city used to sit here, full of people and happiness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now there was nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now there was no one.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But that didn’t stop him from choking out, “Hello? Is anyone there?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because there was no way there could be </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Right?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He swallowed hard. His throat was so dry. The air here was still thick with smoke. He could still smell how everything was burning even though the fire was out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A rumble of thunder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun looked up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh, the sky was horrifying. Red as blood. Red as flames. Pitch black clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, blotting out everything like spilled ink. White lightning reached from one end of the sky to the other. It was a storm but Yeonjun knew rain wouldn’t come.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This place was beyond saving.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The end had already come.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun clenched his hands into fists. He had tried to stop this. He wasn’t sure when and he wasn’t sure how he’d tried, but he and the others… They had all attempted to stop this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were five of them. They’d faced the entire world. Tried to </span>
  <em>
    <span>save</span>
  </em>
  <span> the entire world.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes. It was coming back to him now. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d had dreams like this before. Over and over. There was always a fire. There was always a storm. And it always ended like this. With everything destroyed. The planet turned to ash. The storm raging overhead. The dragon watching and waiting to swallow it all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was pitiful, really, how the five of them kept trying to stop this. It was maddening that they hadn’t given up yet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was supposed to be a way! Soobin had said he’d found a way. That he’d found a </span>
  <em>
    <span>key.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So what had they done wrong? It should have worked!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rubble all around Yeonjun was the aftermath of their failure.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rubble and…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun almost hadn’t seen it. A dark shape among the ruins. A shadow. A person.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He opened his mouth to shout out to them, to ask if they needed help, if they could help him, but…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something wasn’t right.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could feel it. Goosebumps crawled up his arms.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something over there. Down below. In the shadow of what used to be a building. It wasn’t supposed to be there because </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing</span>
  </em>
  <span> was supposed to be here. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He</span>
  </em>
  <span> wasn’t supposed to be here. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he was drawn to that strange shape. Lured by it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If only Yeonjun could get closer. If only he could go see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Almost without thinking, he stepped towards it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was indeed a person. He could see their pale hand, their black clothing, their neck. He could see the blood that darkened their clothing and ran in crimson rivulets down their jaw, across their cheeks, from their forehead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could see his own face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> down there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It almost hurt how recognition blazed in his mind.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was looking at himself. Lifeless and bloody. A failure at the end of the world.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun felt his stomach drop. He shivered from the crown of his head to his toes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just how many times had they tried to stop this? From how many different worlds did they try?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was the smart one. He said he had figured it all out. He said he knew how to open the book. Why wasn’t he here? He would know what to do! </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We weren’t supposed to make it here. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun almost screamed in agony. That’s how awful this feeling was. It clawed at his lungs, dying to be let free. This frustration. It burned him. They kept failing. Over and over. He hated to see it. He hated to see everything they’d worked hard to achieve turn into - he looked around - </span>
  <em>
    <span>this.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Whose fault is this,” he exhaled. It was all he could do not to scream. “Who stopped us?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because they had gotten it right. He knew that. He felt it. He believed it. In one of these worlds, in one of these realities, on one of these timelines, they had done everything they were supposed to do. They had gotten it right. The five of them had survived when they weren’t supposed to survive. They were supposed to be together! So whose fault was it that he was here alone?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Yeonjun who was alive. The Horned One who was dead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whose fault was it that it was just the two of them?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A noise.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was quiet. Faint. But in the maddening silence of the apocalypse, every sound was as loud as thunder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun turned his head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There. In the deepest, darkest, blackest part of the shadow, he saw a light.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Two lights.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A pair of eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A pair of cat’s eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun had seen those eyes before. A long, long, long time ago. He felt that truth in his bones. He’d stared into these eyes and he’d made… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had made a promise.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he’d broken it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 4: Room 17</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Chaos.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The room shook. The lights flickered off and on. The alarm blared loudly. The windows rattled like they might shatter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>An earthquake? An explosion?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whatever it was, it felt like the whole building - no, the whole world - was tipping over, threatening to dump them all out into oblivion.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Guys,” Taehyun squeaked out. He jumped to his feet. His left eye shimmered like stardust.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu just wanted the footage. He kept recording. He held up his phone and got the swinging, sparking light fixtures in the shot. He turned around and zoomed in on Kai’s terrified tears. Then Beomgyu swung his phone around and captured Taehyun’s frightened face. He leaned in really close so that no one who watched this video later would miss the weird way Taehyun’s eye had gone all black.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun shouted something. Soobin’s name, it sounded like.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun frowned. “Get that stupid thing out of my face,” he snapped, shoving Beomgyu’s phone away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu kept recording. What kind of freaky shit was this? This could be something wild. Something wondrous. He wasn’t about to risk missing something big! He was going to record everything. Was this an alien attack? Was the building falling into some sinkhole? Would they die in the end? Regardless, he’d be the first person to post some wacky shit like this online. He’d be the first. This was going to go viral!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu turned around. He had to get Yeonjun’s reaction next.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He raised his phone up to get a good angle, but--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where was everyone?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Not even a second earlier, he had been in the middle of the madness. He’d been surrounded by all those flashing lights. That panic and chaos. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now there was only stillness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Guys,” he said, frowning. “Is this some kind of stupid prank?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But there was no answer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He blinked rapidly but it was so dark that he could hardly tell if his eyes were open or not.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu lowered his phone. Hadn’t Yeonjun just been standing right in front of him? And Taehyun had been off to his left. Kai over to his right. Soobin had been--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu turned.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin had been standing at the door, but… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There wasn’t a door. There wasn’t a </span>
  <em>
    <span>room.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was pretty sure he wasn’t even in the company building anymore.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing felt right. He shouldn’t feel like he was floating. Or drowning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hello?” His voice didn’t even echo. It felt like it had been snatched right out of his throat and swallowed up by the thick, unending darkness around him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was real.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu was afraid of the dark. Ever since he was a child. He hated not being able to see what was right in front of him. He despised how powerless that loss of vision made him feel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop messing with me,” he raised his voice. Maybe the four of them had planned this. He was always pranking them. It was about time they pranked him back. But would they prank him by throwing him headfirst into his only fear? He expected that out of Yeonjun but Soobin would never dare. Kai wouldn’t have the guts. “Guys, this isn’t funny. Turn the lights back on.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He swung out a hand, fully expecting to hit Yeonjun. He felt nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There wasn’t anyone here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> he? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something told him, way deep down, that he wasn’t supposed to be here. That he shouldn’t have made it here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stopped recording. He lowered his phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was serious and he was just now realizing that he should treat it that way. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Whose fault is this?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu stiffened. No one had spoken, he was absolutely sure, but he was absolutely positive that Yeonjun had just asked him something.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The very foundation of everything </span>
  <em>
    <span>shifted</span>
  </em>
  <span> beneath him. A great upheaval. Ripples from far away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something cracked wide open. Something down at the roots simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>broke.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Glass splintered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu saw himself endlessly reflected. Like standing between two mirrors.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was all so sudden. In one breath, he was in the dark alone. In the next, he was one of many.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t even sure how he could see them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were dozens and dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of his mirror images. On and on they went. In one long line that went on forever. Longer than the length of the universe. All of these copies carried his face. His hair. His eyes. His lips. His clothes. They all looked like him. Because they all </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> him. Not just reflections or shadows but </span>
  <em>
    <span>people.</span>
  </em>
  <span> A countless number who had their own lives, their own friendships, their own wants and needs and personalities and fears and secrets. Numerous versions of himself across hundreds of realities. Infinitely looped.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On and on. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eternally.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whenever he moved, they moved.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whenever they moved, he moved.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin had told him about this once. In great detail. Beomgyu wasn’t entirely sure when or where they’d had this conversation because it didn’t seem like a thing Soobin would talk to him about, but… Soobin had told him about this. About the different realities and timelines and how they weren’t supposed to intersect. They weren’t supposed to but they did because the tree that kept everything in balance had been destroyed. Burned to ash.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And that was only the beginning of their peril. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a great tragedy that the five of them needed to prevent. It had to be the five of them because only the five of them were strong enough to stop it. Whenever they failed - and they had failed time and time again - they jumped back through the circle so that they could have the time to try again. It had been Yeonjun’s idea. That’s why he got so pissed whenever their plan didn’t work. But, apparently, there was a way to stop the cycle. There was a way to mend the pieces. The instructions were in the book, Soobin said. He’d finally found a way to open the book. There was a key. They had to find the key. They were running out of chances. That was what Taehyun said. They were running out of time. They were on the last few grains of sand in the hourglass. They were running out of opportunities and running out of patience. Soon, there wouldn’t be any hoops they could jump back through. There wouldn’t be a way to start from the beginning again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soon, they would reach the end of the circle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And they would be on the wrong side of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The five of them had to find a way to survive this mess. They would find a way to stop the World Swallower. They had to get to the other side of the calamity.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had to make it there. They had to win.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had to fulfill the promise. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The promise they had made with the star.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu’s head hurt. Enough to make him wince. How did he know all of these things? The knowledge was right there, though, like splintering realities was simply something he</span>
  <em>
    <span> always talked about.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Was he crazy? His body felt heavy and stiff, like he hadn’t peeled the last few layers of the dream off of his skin and out of his bones.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was this just a dream?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hell, it seemed like it. This shit was freaky enough. Only Beomgyu would dream about his worst fear yet be too stupid to wake up from it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, just as quickly as they had all shown up, the million versions of himself disappeared.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Behind him was a door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A door that hadn’t been there a breath ago. A second ago. A blink ago.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a tall, imposing door made of heavy, dark wood. It had a large, fancy doorknob. Like something you’d find in an old, ritzy hotel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The number ‘17’ hung on the door in polished gold letters. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A beacon in the dark.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A dream at the crumbling edge of another dream.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu had seen this door before. It killed him that he couldn’t remember exactly where! He had seen this door. In a long hallway of other similar doors. At school? That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t be right at all. The public school he’d gone to didn’t have doors like this. Yet the more he tried to deny it, the more insistent the memory became.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu tried to shake it all away. He was just stressed, he told himself. He was just freaking out because of how heavy the darkness was around him, like a physical thing bearing down on him, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He hated the dark. He couldn't stand it. Being in the dark meant being alone. It meant having nothing but his own spiraling thoughts for company. This darkness felt like a cold hand dragging bony fingers up his neck.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had to get out of here. And the only way out seemed to be through this door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> seen this door, now that he stared at it more closely. He had seen it. At his school. This was Soobin’s dorm room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why? Why?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why would he think that?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu hesitated. Absolutely confused.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He and Soobin didn’t go to the same high school. Besides, Beomgyu didn’t go to a boarding school. He went to a shitty public school. There weren’t any dorms!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So how did he know this door? Why did his brain flood him with memories and images and dreams of going to a boarding school out in the mountains with Soobin and the others? Where they learned… magic?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was the best at casting spells. He was top of their class. Always being praised by the professors. But Kai was a gifted talent and just had this really spiffy way of putting the most complicated and layered of spells on top of the smallest and simplest of objects.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even Soobin couldn’t do that. Not easily.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shit. What was Beomgyu thinking? Why was he pretending that magic was just something he and his friends could </span>
  <em>
    <span>do? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Was he losing it for real? Was he not getting enough sleep?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> been having the weirdest nightmares lately.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was always a fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Frustrated and desperate for answers, Beomgyu grabbed the doorknob, twisted it in his hand and then pushed the door open. If opening the door didn’t solve his problems, if it didn’t do anything else, it would at least get him out of the dark.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh, glory. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The room on the other side of the door was brightly-lit and the light pushed into the darkness and chased the shadows away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, if he could just get in the room--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he couldn’t open the door very far. It was unlocked, yes, but it was bolted on the inside with a gold chain that prevented him from opening the door farther than a narrow, useless smidge.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Perhaps Soobin was inside? It was after afternoon classes and Soobin wouldn’t have called Beomgyu and asked to meet him here if he was busy. Right? It had sounded urgent.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu leaned towards the crack in the door. “Soobin,” he whispered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No answer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or, rather, he hadn’t said it loud enough. There was no way Soobin could hear such a tiny little sound over the deafening noise of all of that falling rain.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a terrible storm outside.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lightning flickered. The bright white of it came through the windows and flooded Soobin’s room, briefly washing the color out of everything.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu saw… himself?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Over in the far corner.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu saw another version of himself already in the room. Already talking with Soobin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How could you do this to us,” Soobin asked. God, he was angry. Practically screaming. And, boy, did it take a lot to piss Soobin off. “Don’t try to talk your way out of this. I caught you red-handed! You're a thief.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You don’t know what you’re doing with this thing,” The Other Beomgyu said. “You’re just pretending. You’re lying through your teeth! You’ll say anything to stay on Yeonjun’s good side.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shut the hell up,” Soobin yelled at him. At The Other Beomgyu. “I don't care about anything else. Just give me back my book.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"It's not yours. It belongs to all of us."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was a book in The Other Beomgyu’s hand. Leather-bound. Gilded in gold. Locked up tight by a clockwork mechanism.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t Soobin’s book, exactly, but because he was the best at spells, they had decided that he should hold on to it and try to find a way to open it. There had to be a spell out there strong enough to break it open. That’s what Soobin kept saying. And Yeonjun believed him so he didn’t ask questions.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Beomgyu had asked questions. The Other Beomgyu had asked questions.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re going to ruin everything,” The Other Beomgyu declared. “If the others find out--” He didn’t finish his sentence. He just made a run for the door. Like he absolutely </span>
  <em>
    <span>needed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get out of the room with that book in his hands.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Soobin was big and fast and strong. He stepped into The Other Beomgyu’s way and knocked him backwards with wild strength, throwing him against the wall and making everything shake and rattle as thunder boomed outside. The book skidded across the tile floor, forgotten.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not the only one keeping secrets, am I,” Soobin snarled. “We wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if it weren’t for you!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Other Beomgyu chuckled. “You really are the smartest one, huh? You finally figured it out.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So you admit it,” Soobin questioned. He clenched his fists, ready for a fight. “Are you admitting that everything’s screwed up now because of what you did way back then?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Other Beomgyu didn’t respond with words. He responded with action.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stepped forward. Slowly. Like a predator cornering it's prey. His entire demeanor had changed. He’d looked pushed-around and pitiful moments before but now he looked like he was the one in absolute control of this situation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin sensed the change in him too. “Beomgyu,” he said, cautious. Fearful. His earlier anger had vanished just that fast.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Other Beomgyu frowned. Almost scowled. “We could have done this the easy way. You should have just let me leave with the book." He glanced down at the book near his feet. "You should have just let me show Taehyun that you’ve known how to open the book since the start!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu’s body moved almost on instinct. It was just his natural response to any kind of confrontation. He raised his phone. He slid his thumb across the screen to unlock it. He started recording video. He pushed the phone through the crack in the door because the camera lens could see far clearer than his eyes could.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The camera lens could capture the full extent of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>transformation</span>
  </em>
  <span> happening right in front of him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes. There was no other word to describe what The Other Beomgyu had just done. He had transformed. Changed into something monstrous. Bone-like spines ripped out of his back with gut-wrenching, wet noises. One, two, three, four… Beomgyu lost count of them. The gray, twisted, bloody things almost reached up to the ceiling.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They looked like fingers. Ugly, spindly, grasping fingers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holy shit. Holy fucking shit!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu zoomed in.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was this… real? Like, what the hell was he even looking at? Some kind of damn demon? Was any of this actually happening? Was he really--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re going to regret this,” Soobin whimpered. “What’s hurting me going to do?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Other Beomgyu didn’t say anything. His anger had gone beyond the need for words. He only wanted blood. He only wanted to </span>
  <em>
    <span>feed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was about to be attacked. He knew that. He knew the next few words he said would be his last so he made them count: “I knew you would betray us.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Spined One turned his head. Slowly slowly slowly. He looked away from his prey, and--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His pitch-black eyes found Beomgyu’s at the door on the other side of the room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu gasped. His eyes went wide with surprise. With realization.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu figured out the truth then, staring at himself in the face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He put all of the puzzle pieces together, looking at this twisted version of himself. This angry, evil, black-eyed monster with these… With these </span>
  <em>
    <span>things</span>
  </em>
  <span> growing out of its back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He figured it all out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. He had it wrong. He hadn’t thought about it deeply enough.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was no monster. This was no fucked-up version of </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was his true form.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Spined One was the original.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All the others were copies.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu took his eyes off of his phone screen so that he could look up at The Other Beomgyu in the flesh.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The real Beomgyu.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Spined One.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s what his name was. The real thing who was here when the world began. The real thing that would be here when the world ends.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu exhaled, “Holy shit.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It all made so much sense! Beomgyu didn’t know why he hadn’t figured it out sooner. Whether it was in this life, in this reality, or in any of the other worlds they had slipped into and absolutely destroyed. He didn’t know why he didn’t know this. But he had finally figured it all out. Faster than Yeonjun. Faster than Taehyun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just not faster than Soobin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu smirked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was his fault. All of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Every trial. Every challenge. Every error. Every failure.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All of it was his fault.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. Saying that it was his fault would imply that he felt remorse. That he experienced pain. That he was guilty.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That he suffered.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. This was all by his design. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was all part of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>plan</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu had been the one to start the fire. Back at the very beginning. He had been the spark. The cause. The start of it all. He had become the kindling that destroyed worlds and shattered dimensions and brought hell to earth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu had been the one to burn it all down back then. When the five of them had first hopped across dimensions together. When they had found that tiny little slice of reality just for the five of them to share.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had been the one to destroy it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had tossed the match and watched the flames destroy the tree. Eat the forest. Consume the island. Rip the universe apart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had been the one.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Beomgyu had watched the flames eat everything with a grin on his face. He’d watched the trees collapse. Felt the island sink. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Witnessed the end of the world again and again. Brought about the end of the world again and again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stopped the five from leaving the dream. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He kept them here. He kept them from reaching the end of the circle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even in that moment, Beomgyu couldn’t help but laugh. Joy bubbled up in him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had started all of this with his own hands. And he would do it again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because there was always a fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because there was always a storm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Spined One smiled at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 5: Moratorium of Rest</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun should have seen this coming.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He should have known that something was off about a night like tonight. There was something in the air. Something in the way that tonight made him </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He should have been able to tell that something - that everything - was going to go wrong.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The practice room felt hot, stifling. The air was humid from an evening of working and sweating and dancing. It had been a long night. They were all exhausted and sore but Yeonjun had that look on his face. He was determined to teach a lesson that Kai just wasn’t quick enough to pick up on yet. They would be here all night at this rate.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun glanced up at the clock on the other side of the room. It was a minute to midnight. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It would be dawn before they went home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun put his attention back on his phone. He scrolled to a new song. Something towards the bottom of his playlist that he usually didn’t get a chance to listen to. It was a good song, he thought. If a little different. Dreamy and ambient with a slow, pulsating beat. Soobin wouldn’t like it. It wouldn’t be fast or hard enough for Beomgyu. Maybe Yeonjun would appreciate the floaty soundscape? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Time ticked by. He played the song once then started it over again to try to imagine what it would sound like to the others if he ever played it to them. Soobin might zone out once he realized it wasn’t by any of his favorite artists. Beomgyu might nod along for a little bit but then he would get distracted and wander off without listening all the way to the end. Kai might appreciate the vocals, at least. Yeonjun would at least appreciate it. Maybe even ask who sang it, what the song title was. Taehyun was certain. He started the song over again and tried to determine the exact second of the song where Yeonjun’s face would light up as he understood the music. As it </span>
  <em>
    <span>reached</span>
  </em>
  <span> him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun glanced over at Kai and Yeonjun in the corner of the practice studio, going over the same dance routine over and over. Tirelessly. Endlessly. How had Kai not gotten it right by now? Was he messing up on purpose?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Irritated, Taehyun glanced back up at the clock.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a minute to midnight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He should have followed Soobin’s move and just took a nap or something to help the time pass. But Soobin was lucky. He could nap anywhere. He could sleep almost on demand. Taehyun couldn’t do that. Even if he managed to fall asleep here in the studio, he’d just go back to the dorm and toss and turn the rest of the night and then have to function tomorrow on just an hour or two of sleep. He’d be a mess.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>11:59 was the time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nearly brushed it off. Taehyun scrolled back through his playlist to find another song, something a bit more upbeat that would help him stay awake, only to look back up at the clock.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no way that it could still be a minute to midnight. He’d played this song enough times for it to be five past midnight by now. Maybe even later than that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now he was aware.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about tonight felt off. Something about this room didn’t feel… correct.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was danger nearby, his instinct told him, because Taehyun felt alert and agitated. His muscles were tense like he needed to be ready to jump up and run at a moment’s notice. It was a reaction to something that hadn’t happened yet. Preparation for something that hadn’t happened yet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The song playing in his ears got all funky and distorted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun frowned. He’d just bought these headphones! They better not be messing up already.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He checked his phone. He still had plenty of battery. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun pulled his headphones off one ear. That solved nothing. The music still sounded strange. Slowed-down. Echoey. The way the tempo had slowed to a crawl was almost haunting. The singing was all low and stretched out and freaky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t just the music in his ears that sounded off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was everything in the practice studio. Yeonjun’s patient corrections to Kai’s form. Kai’s constant apologizing. Beomgyu’s delighted giggles. Soobin’s whispered, “Hello?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything sounded like it was coming from very far away. Like he was hearing the world from the other side of a pane of glass.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun could feel the change approaching. He could feel the tear in the fabric of reality growing wider and wider, seconds away from splitting.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun glanced up at the clock just in time to watch the second hand lurch backwards.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hell broke loose.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The entire room shook as their frail reality crumbled under the minor amount of stress.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The windows rattled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The lights flickered. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sound, now perfectly sharp and clear, bombarded Taehyun’s ears, pounding into him enough to make him dizzy. Kai screamed in panic. Yeonjun yelled over the chaos that they should all stick together, that Soobin shouldn’t go out the door. Beomgyu cackled like a madman as he recorded everything on his phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun stood up, every limb felt stiff and frozen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain shot through his left eye.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could have prevented this. He had seen it coming, after all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could have warned them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was his job to look out for the dangers and he hadn’t done his job!</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then the chaos abruptly ended. All the noise and movement and heat and action… It was all gone. Tossed away. Discarded.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was just him standing there. Alone. Swamped in frigid darkness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun had slipped off the edge of the circle and fallen into the in-between space at the center. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was alright. It happened sometimes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hopping across dimensions wasn’t exactly something anyone could do. Kai was just beginning to get a handle on it. He preferred to improvise. He preferred to just wing it. But magic like this required structure and Kai was awful at following directions. Even Soobin, as smart as he was, could get the magic just a tad bit wrong sometimes and send them all just slightly left of where they needed to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No worries. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Reality was a constantly spinning ring and even if they wound up at the center somewhere, centrifugal force would eventually snap them back into a proper dimension. That’s just how things were. That’s just how reality was constructed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All Taehyun had to do was wait and then he’d be right back where he was supposed to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the meantime, he may as well get a good look at where he was. The center was unexplored territory. It wasn’t a place that was easy to explore since reality itself kept yanking them out like a rubber band snapping back into shape after being pulled taut. Perhaps things would be easier to handle, easier to navigate, if they could find their way through the center.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun did the one thing he was good at. He observed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This fragment of the center was surprisingly stable, he realized. Usually it crumbled immediately beneath any amount of pressure, unable to maintain its shape. But wherever he was seemed to be holding up. Solid. Steady.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A lucid dream.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There wasn’t much light. There couldn’t be much light here. The center spun faster than light traveled. It had to go so fast just to produce the friction and heat and energy needed to keep the infinite dimensions in a perfect ring. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Although light was scarce, Taehyun could see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could always see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He would always be able to see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Purple flowers grew out of the blackness. They sprouted from the black, from one end of the center to the other. Beautiful. Fragrant.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their petals swayed gently as the center continued to spin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s beautiful,” he whispered, turning his head one way and then the other. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As many times as he’d been here, as many times as he’d fallen into the center, he had never landed on a fragment so </span>
  <em>
    <span>solid</span>
  </em>
  <span>. So strong. These were temporary places. These were places that couldn’t even be places because they were so temporary. So ephemeral. Rarely did they have the time to construct anything so to see an entire garden of flowers was mesmerizing in and of itself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I shouldn’t be here,” Taehyun said. Because the speed at which the center spun should have thrown him off by now and slung him back into reality. He shouldn’t be able to just stand and stare and </span>
  <em>
    <span>look</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He shouldn’t have the time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As if to go against everything he knew, the fragment he was on expanded. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It should be crumbling into the eternal abyss, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>growing</span>
  </em>
  <span>. What was it attempting to do? Become its own reality? How absurd. There wasn’t room for any others. There was already no space available for the ones they had! It’s why they could burn through them so quickly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun squinted. He could just barely see the other side of the garden. He could just barely see--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gasped.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This was exciting. Was something as fantastical as this even allowed? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun,” he called out again, louder. He waved an arm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What were the chances that he and Yeonjun would land on the exact same fragment? As fast as the center had to spin to keep everything moving, it was impossible to hop a straight line through dimensions. It should have been impossible to wind up on the same tiny little fragment of ephemeral space. The percentage had to be very low. Like… 0.0001% low. But Taehyun was witnessing it with his own eye.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With his own eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun!” He shouted the name at the top of his lungs. He waved both of his arms. He jumped up and down.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Things like time and distance could get a little wonky at the center, where everything got kind of stretched and blurred at the corners, but there was no way Yeonjun couldn’t see him. Couldn’t hear him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh, this was the discovery of a lifetime. It was a dream come true.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He ran through everything he’d just learned:</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had landed on the same fragment. The fragment was attempting to metamorphosize into reality. The center was spinning slow enough for Taehyun to bear witness to it all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This changed everything. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This upset the very foundation of all that they knew about the circle and how it worked, how it spun, how it kept everything turning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun couldn’t wait to tell Soobin! </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With this knowledge, they could splice the ring and lay it all out like a line. Give everything a beginning. Give everything an end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun just about shouted himself hoarse. “Yeonjun!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A chill settled in his chest.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As long as he had been watching and Yeonjun hadn’t moved. Hadn’t responded to him at all. Hadn’t looked up. Hadn’t waved back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something was wrong.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he was tired of things going wrong. But something about the way tonight felt let him know that things would only get worse.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun stepped through the garden of flowers towards where Yeonjun was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One step at a time. Slow. Crushing flowers flat beneath his feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If Taehyun had been a bit more observant, he would have noticed how the fragment was beginning to liquify beneath him. How parts of the world stuck to his shoes and smeared across the hem of his pants in sparkling, purple madness. If he had paid a little more attention, he would have noticed that the fragment wasn’t half as stable as he’d assumed. It was merely spreading. Melting. Expanding outwards because it had no place else to go.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just a touch more attention and Taehyun would have noticed that the center hadn’t so much slowed down as it had </span>
  <em>
    <span>stopped completely.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeonjun?” Taehyun swallowed down the cold, hard lump in his throat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In front of him was The Horned One.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pale. Cold. Still. Rotted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dead. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sat lifeless in a pool of undulating insight. The color was so painfully vibrant against his white, washed-out skin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun nearly choked on his own fright. “Yeonjun?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Horned One was covered from head to toe in torn, shredded space. Splintered dimensions sluiced down his chest and across his hands and off of his fingers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Drip.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Drip.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Drip.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Reality unspooled like blood from the tears in The Horned One’s throat, the rips across his cheeks and forehead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun couldn’t quite figure out what had happened here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Horned One had been here so long that the garden of purple flowers had partially consumed him, roots and leaves and petals sprang from his bare feet and the holes in his head where his horns should be. Thorny vines grew from his back and wrapped around his shoulders and neck.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was as if The Horned One was serving as an anchor to keep this tiny little fragment stable.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And the only thing powerful enough to do that was the star.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The star the five of them had made a promise to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A promise that was now pale and corpse-cold, wedged into the fragment of space, still bleeding dimensions.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t the five of them that had broken the promise with the star.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was the star that had broken the promise with the five of them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun clamped a hand down over his left eye, wincing in sudden, excruciating pain.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could no longer see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 6: Boy Of Eternity</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They always called Kai talented. Gifted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ever since he was young.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But, really, he was just broken.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Things most people did, he couldn’t do. Things most people saw, he couldn’t see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, he could do them. He could see them. But only in ways that made sense to him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Never in ways that made sense to other people.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were times when Kai remembered things he probably shouldn’t. Everyone else he knew forgot their childhood memories but Kai could vividly recall his. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was this one time… He remembered being somewhere with his mother… Oh, he couldn’t have been but five or six at the time! This was so long ago but the memory shown like a jewel in his mind. He and his mother, they were outdoors somewhere beneath a sky full of twinkling stars and paper lanterns. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were at a party or festival. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was music and laughter and fireworks and people.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had an ice cream cone in his hand. A big one. Vanilla. Perfect for a summer night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was going to take it to his mother so she could have some of it too. He ran and ran, happy to share something so good with her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But then there had been a boy in front of him. A man. He was tall like a tower.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The man shouldn’t have been there because </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span> had been there. He’d been looking. He’d been paying attention! Kai had run into him because the man was just </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span> all of a sudden, standing in the center of a circle of burning gold. He had dropped his ice cream. It had fallen into the grass.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai shouldn’t have remembered such a thing. It was a minor event that should have gotten lost beneath the weight of all of his other memories as he grew up but he clearly remembered that night. Kai clearly remembered Soobin’s face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And that was impossible. Wasn’t it? Because he hadn’t known Soobin twelve or so years ago. They didn’t grow up in the same place. There was no way they could have met. And even if Kai had known him then, wouldn’t Soobin have been a child on that night as well? They’d have been around the same age.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So why did the Soobin back then look like the man Kai knew now? Unchanged.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And what were the chances that they’d meet again?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even if Soobin didn’t remember Kai the same way Kai remembered him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come on, Kai,” Yeonjun said, frowning. He had a hand on his hip and this hardened look in his eyes. “I can tell you’re getting distracted. You’re not thinking about what you’re doing. You have to focus. Let’s try it again. From the top.” He was already starting the song from the correct section again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai resisted the urge to throw his hands up in surrender. He’d never be perfect. He hated that Yeonjun thought that he could be. “Sorry,” he said instead. “I’ll keep trying.” And he’d been trying all night. He was absolutely soaked in sweat. His legs may as well have been jelly. “I’ll pay more attention.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just… Why was it so hard for him to remember these simple dance steps? Why had it taken them half the night to get this far?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was actually starting to get mad at himself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun counted him in, “5, 6, 7, 8…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai was just about to start the first dance move when it felt like the whole world split in two, right down the middle. He almost</span>
  <em>
    <span> felt </span>
  </em>
  <span>it crack in half.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything changed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything shifted.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’s going on,” Kai cried out. Tears already pooling in the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t stand things like this. He was so easily frightened. Even the simplest of pranks and scares had him crying. “Yeonjun,” he squeaked. “Make it stop.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Yeonjun wasn’t paying attention to him. He had turned around to face the other side of the room. He was shouting something at Soobin. “We have to stick together!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was standing at the door. Was he trying to leave? He may have had the right idea.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The floor shook so hard that Kai thought it would crack open beneath him and swallow him in one piece. The lights hanging from the ceiling swung so violently that he was positive one would come loose and crush him beneath it. The alarm was so so so loud that he could practically feel the sound waves bouncing off the back of his skull.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai let out a garbled scream.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hated loud noises.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hated flickering, flashing lights.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It all made his head hurt. It all made him feel dizzy. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut but wouldn’t it be better to find a way out of this?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Up became down. Left became right. Dark became light.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His eyes hurt. His chest hurt. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to remember what the doctor had told him to do whenever he felt his anxiety spike.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun usually stayed calm in situations like this, right? Kai could just ask him for help. He stepped forward but as soon as he took his foot off the floor, his balance left him. He stopped short, breathing hard. Everywhere he looked, it was like the world was ending.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything around him became just a little inside out. A little broken. A little damaged.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just like him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kai.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The word was softly spoken but he could still hear it over the ringing in his ears and the rumbling beneath his feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai turned around to face the noise and saw the wide open practice studio door behind him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His chest felt tight. His lungs burned. His heart thudded hard behind his ribs like he’d been running a marathon.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How had he gotten next to the door? He hadn’t been standing on that side of the room. He’d been in the corner with Yeonjun, next to all of the sound equipment. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How had--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kai.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The voice was sharper now. More desperate.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai almost couldn’t keep his eyes open because of how dizzying the flashing lights were, but he saw a sparkle that was different from the maddening flicker of the fluorescents. A tiny little star in the night sky. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Through the open door and down the long, cavernous hallway, he saw a shape. White. Feminine. Familiar.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai rushed to the doorway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The star twinkled a little bit brighter at the far end of the hallway. In front of the elevator doors. In front of the only exit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai took off running. Desperate to finish this. More than ready to bring this all to a close.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took all of three steps into the hall before he realized he wasn’t in the hallway any longer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t sure where he was. He wasn’t sure if he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>anywhere.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The practice studio was not behind him. The elevator doors were not in front of him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This place was broken.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just like he was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was supposed to be shape and form and substance. There was nothingness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There needed to be light and sound and time and distance. There was an abyss. Infinitely deep.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This place was just a broken-off shard.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This place was just a shadow. Formless. Without mass or purpose or life.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t be here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t supposed to make it here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then again, he was broken. And broken things didn’t have to follow the rules. Broken things could bypass logic. Broken things could slip through the cracks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was all broken things were good for. Getting underfoot.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Broken things should just be swept under the rug. Broken things should just be thrown out like garbage. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why were there so many broken things here? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Who was breaking everything?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was someone who Kai knew. That much was clear. He didn’t have to think about it very hard, now that he had finished counting the sharp, broken bits of himself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Someone dear to Kai’s heart was purposefully breaking things. Whenever the five of them thought they were fixing it all, there was one who came behind them and smashed their work into infinite pieces. It was becoming a pattern. The same thing over and over again. The same person ruining everything each time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai only knew that because he broke into a few more pieces every time it happened.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He would be in pieces too small to matter very soon. They were running out of time. They could only start from the beginning again a finite number of times.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>5, 6, 7, 8… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai looked around.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This broken space shouldn’t have been able to show him anything but it pulled together the smashed-up bits of itself and showed him a way forward. Not out. But forward.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai turned his head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He saw a set of white stairs. He saw a set of white doors.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took the stairs. One at a time. He was not at all surprised that a broken thing could touch a broken thing without the both of them shattering completely. Without blood leaking from the cuts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai put his hands on the golden handles and pulled the white doors open.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun always said that the center was nothing but formless darkness. He was The One-Eyed One and could see even when the others couldn’t see. Taehyun knew the center better than any of them because he could see the blurred edges. He could gauge the distance. He could measure what was immeasurable because he could see both ends.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Kai was broken.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>To him, the center wasn’t eternal darkness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>To him, the center was light.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>To him, the space between dimensions was a blue, boundless sky filled to the brim with soft, white clouds and a bright white sun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai was broken.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>To him, it was reality that was full of darkness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He could feel the way the center spun around him. He could feel the way it threatened to fling him back into reality. But for just a moment, he could enjoy this place. He could enjoy this in between space full of light and clouds. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taehyun could see things but he couldn’t see </span>
  <em>
    <span>this.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin was smart but he couldn’t understand that the center was a place they should be running towards. Not away from. The center was where they were safest. Where the light was brightest. It was the edges of the ring that were dangerous. The edges were dark and crumbling away, losing tiny little bits of themselves to the force of the spin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the center, Kai was the only broken thing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Across from him, a short distance away, another set of dimension doors opened.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Standing there were Yeonjun and Taehyun and Soobin and Beomgyu and the empty space where Kai should stand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kai,” Yeonjun shouted over the distance. “We can’t make it to the end unless there’s five of us!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had promised.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai took in a deep breath. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t the Yeonjun and Taehyun and Soobin and Beomgyu who he had just left behind in the practice studio. He knew that. He understood that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Yeonjun standing in the doorway across from him wasn’t the Yeonjun that made him do the same dance over and over again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai was broken.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In his shattered pieces, he knew that there was an eternity of Yeonjuns. Of Taehyuns. Of Soobins. Of Beomgyus. There was an infinite number of them. One for each of his pieces.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But only five of them could make it to the end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Only five of them could break the ring and lay it flat and stop the never ending cycle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Only five of them could stop the dragon from swallowing the world.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But were these the five that would make it there?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai looked down. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The space between dimensions was so vast and yet so tenuous. It was why hopping between realities was so risky. It was why trying again and again was getting so dangerous.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One wrong move. One wrong step…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kai,” Yeonjun called again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai looked up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If he doubted himself, he wouldn’t go anywhere. He didn’t have a way out but he had a way forward.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kai gulped hard.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He swallowed his anxiety. He made himself relax and breathe. He pulled the broken pieces of himself together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stepped out into the bright, vivid blue sky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Section 7: The Beginning Of The End</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Time lurched forward.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The second hand ticked forward the last three times it needed to turn the clock to midnight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rip in the dimension healed and the frayed edges of reality sewed themselves together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It took a while but the ripple radiating outwards from the catastrophe passed and the water on the surface of the lake stilled and settled.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The five separated threads found their way back to each other because they could only do this as five. Thank god there were five of them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The chaos quieted. And, at least for now, the five of them had another attempt to stop the fire. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>To stop the storm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because there was always a fire. Because there was always a storm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin pushed the practice studio door open and stepped inside. His insides sizzled with adrenaline as he made it back to safety. The things he’d seen. The disasters he’d witnessed. The tears he’d shed. The emotions had been so strong just a moment earlier so why did all of that now feel like a dream he’d woken up from? A dream he was all too quickly forgetting.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What had his dream even been about? Each step he took into the room robbed him of the details until he wasn’t even sure he was remembering anything at all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had been such a long day.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Did you guys…” Soobin began. How did he even word this? How did he even begin to tell such a wild, ridiculous story? Was he a madman for even wanting to? “Did you guys hear that?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder towards the studio door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had anyone else heard that weird voice calling his name?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hear what?” Taehyun asked in that cold, stern voice of his. He always spoke in that same world-weary tone. Like he’d seen too much. Taehyun brushed past Soobin to sit back down on the bench by the door. He put his headphones on and queued up another of those weird, dreary songs that he liked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, that kind of reaction was expected. Soobin tried again. “Did you guys not hear it? Out in the hall?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That voice calling his name, begging for his attention, trying so hard to </span>
  <em>
    <span>show him something.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about a key.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Guys? Did you hear that?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it was as if Soobin hadn’t asked the question at all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beomgyu turned away from him, phone held high, recording everything even when there was nothing of interest to record.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yeonjun and Kai returned to their corner by all of the sound equipment, Yeonjun finally telling Kai that they were finished for the night. That they had made a stellar amount of progress and could keep working at it tomorrow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The two of them practically collapsed onto the stools, groaning in exhaustion.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The second hand ticked on.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a minute after midnight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin stood in the center of the practice studio. He felt so lost. Unmoored. Confused. If he didn’t feel so heavy, he was certain that he’d float to the ceiling. Soobin blinked. His mind felt blank like he’d just forgotten something terribly important. Hmmm. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been out in the hall in the first place. He couldn’t possibly have been talking to someone out there at such a late hour. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe he’d gone for a bathroom break.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It bothered him that he wasn’t entirely sure.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin swallowed hard. His throat felt tight. His eyes felt dry like he’d been crying.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had he just asked the guys something? It felt like he’d just asked a really big question. Something about a promise. He couldn’t shake the itchy feeling that he was waiting on an answer from someone. But none of the boys were looking at him so perhaps he’d only dreamt that he’d asked a question.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was something in his hand. Something cold and heavy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin raised his right fist and slowly unfurled his fingers like flower petals seeking the sun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On his palm was a twenty-sided dice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He almost laughed at the sight of such a normal, benign object. It probably belonged to Kai. He was the only one who liked to play those weird tabletop games with all of the dice. So why was Soobin holding onto it like it was important? He was clutching it like it was--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The dice sparked gold in his hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A flicker of starlight he wasn’t so sure he was supposed to see.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again but that didn’t stop the freaky sight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The dice flashed gold again. Like the tip of a flame. The light stamped a pattern in the air above his hand. A geometric circle. One he was all too familiar with. It was a stamped pattern that looked to him like a complicated… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Spell circle?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin didn’t know what that meant but he somehow knew the words.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They tasted like the right thing on his tongue.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He lowered his hand back to his side, positive that he was still dreaming and that he’d wake up in his dorm bed any moment now. But he didn’t wake up. He was already awake. He was standing in the center of the practice studio. The dice felt heavier than it should have in his hand. Like it was larger than it looked. Like it could be used as an anchor to hold him in place somewhere, even when the storm raged around him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soobin looked up and almost startled at the sight of his own reflection in the wall of studio mirrors.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t be so sure, because he was certain he was just tired and in need of a good night’s sleep, but why did it feel like there was a whole other world on the other side of the glass? Why did it feel like that was a very real possibility?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Movement out of the corner of his eye caught Soobin’s attention.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He looked over to his right only to stare straight into the lens of the camera on Beomgyu’s phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The dice in his hand sparked gold.</span>
</p>
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